Learning About Strength of Spirit (Or, Just One of My Fire-Fightin' War Stories?) - by Bill Neal

"Toughness is in the spirit and soul, not in the muscles."   -~ Alex Karras

(For those who don't know, Alex Karras was a professional football player who later became an actor.)

But - here's my story. As a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, I learned that strength of spirit meant much more that physical strength. On one particular fire dispatch, our ranger district in Northern California had already sent out all the standing fire crews, so they scratched together a crew from what they could find on the district, anybody who could pass the step-test and had a red card (fire-job qualifications card). The crew boss and a squad boss were from fire management but I was the other squad boss and, at the time, I was the assistant silviculturist working in timber management. Most of the crew were young and inexperienced, from the Young Adult Conservation Corps, with a professional archeologist too, a young woman.
We spent three weeks going from fire to fire, three total in Southern California - three weeks of 18-hour shifts, getting four hours sleep a night in paper sleeping bags on the ground, without a day off. When we were dispatched to a new fire, the fire command thought we were a fresh crew and sent us out on night-duty to locations that the day crews were being flown into by helicopter. We had to walk in, up 80% slopes (I had a clinometer with me), from Cow Canyon Saddle up Mt. Baldy, and then out again at the end of the shift.
I was carrying an 18-pound chainsaw on my shoulder and a butt-pack full of rations and every kind of snack I could grab in camp. I was wearing a cruiser vest with lots of pockets under my brush coat and all my pockets were stuffed with candy, cookies, cans of juice, etc. Altogether, it was a heavy load. When we got to our assigned area where we were to cut fireline, reinforce the existing line, and put out hotspots, I started handing out the goodies to the crew - they were beginning to be in pretty bad shape by then and just walking in was a huge effort - everyone was falling out. The young archeologist was doing the same thing that I was doing. We were doing what we could to buck up the spirits of the crew - even the crew boss and the other squad boss were starting to lose it. At the time, I was 6'1", maybe 160 pounds, the archeologist was maybe 5'4" - this was in contrast to a muscular young ex-high school football hero on the crew who had started out flexing and strutting in fire camp.
The next night, we were doing structure protection in Icehouse Canyon on Mt. Baldy, up on the roofs of the cabins trying to keep them from burning. Earlier, we had gotten a hot meal at the Ice House Lodge, a beautiful old building with county firemen laying all over the floor sleeping - in the middle of our meal we had to run outside and cut a line around the lodge to keep it from burning (it finally burned to the ground in another fire several years later).
Icehouse Canyon was aptly named - a narrow, steep canyon with a year-round stream of snow-melt run-off - it was cold! It was approaching Thanksgiving by this point so we were freezing but, despite that, we were in the middle of a fire-storm powered by Santa Ana winds with fire blowing everywhere. It was getting pretty miserable. And then the ante went up - the burning vegetation on the steep canyon-sides above us was no longer holding back boulders, allowing them to roll loose - they were bounding and crashing down the canyon-side in the dark, right on top of us, like cannonballs. We could hear them coming but we couldn't see them in the dark until they were already there. We were totally exposed on the rooftops with no way to protect ourselves. That's when the football player started crying.
By that time, it was all that the slight little archeologist and I could do to keep the crew together and functioning. She was mothering everybody, even though she was probably still only in her 20's, and, at 36, I was being Papa Bear. She really did impress me with the strength of her spirit.
It was a life lesson for me in one of those situations that absolutely tests the limits of your endurance, your physical condition, your emotional stamina, and your spirit - one of those "when the chips are down" situations. I was struggling too, but I kept myself going by helping keep the others going. In that situation, what mattered most was not about being male or female, or being big and muscular, or being experienced - what mattered most was the strength of spirit, from whomever it came. It was quite a lesson for me that I will always remember.